


there’s your heart and it sees with its wings out

by TheseusInTheMaze



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Baking, F/F, Fluff, Metaphors, Post True Ending (We Know the Devil), Post-Canon, Xenobiology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24814330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/pseuds/TheseusInTheMaze
Summary: Snapshots, after they've tasted the apple.
Relationships: Jupiter/Venus (We Know the Devil), Neptune/Venus (We Know the Devil)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39
Collections: Little Black Dress Exchange 2020





	there’s your heart and it sees with its wings out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morphogenesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphogenesis/gifts).



> Title comes from _Daughter of God_ by PhemieC, which I cannot recommend enough!

"Did you know eagles can swim?" Neptune asks Venus, as the two of them sit on a rock by the lake and let the sun bake into them. 

"Is that an allegory?" Venus frowns, and she splashes her feet in the water, making little wavelets ripple across the glassy surface of the lake. "Shoot, I was never any good at allegories. So the eagle represents God, right? Or was that pelicans? I know pelicans were supposed to represent Jesus -" 

"For fuck’s sake," Neptune says, "it isn't an allegory. Not everything is a symbol or an allegory or a metaphor.” She puts a hand on top of Venus’, and her skin is cool and damp, a nice contrast to the hot sun beating down on them. 

“Can you blame me for making that mistake?” Venus stretches out and feels her own brightness flaring up, to match the sun. Is the sun getting dimmer as she steals from it, or is that just her own imagination?

“I can blame you for anything I want to,” Neptune says with no rancor, and she shoves Venus into the lake with a cold, damp hand to the lower back. 

Venus makes an indignant noise (she’s still good at those) and flops into the water with a splash, her arms and legs and wings flailing, stirring up the water. The water has an undercurrent of Neptune flowing through it. It tastes like the mouth of an estuary, only with salt, if salt was Neptune. Then again, Neptune is one of the saltiest people that Venus has ever known. 

The metaphor has gotten away from Venus. She stays in the water, suspended, floating like she’s hovering in space. All of her eyes are blinking, and she can see hints of things stirring in the lakebed, flickering through the dimness. Venus comes up for air, and she lets her feet kick, treading water. 

“In retrospect, it’s kind of fucked up that the lake is this deep,” Neptune says, her tone thoughtful. She’s got her feet in the water still, kicking them, and more water is pouring out of her, mingling with the lake. If they stay here, the lake may end up being entirely made of Neptune. And also overflowing the banks, because when you add liquid to a space that has liquid there will be overflow. 

Let it. It might wash this whole place clean of all the horrors who knows how many kids have been subjected to.

(Also, everyone who’s stayed around is at the very top of the hill, so nobody’s stuff will float off into the horizon.)

“Good metaphor for this place,” Neptune adds, and her tone is unusually reflective. 

“What happened to not everything being a metaphor or an allegory or whatever?” asks Venus. She rests her elbows on the rock the two of them had been sitting on before Venus was shoved in.

“Just because everything isn’t a metaphor doesn’t mean a lot of things aren’t,” says Neptune. “And this whole fucking lake is a metaphor for this place. They just throw you off the deep end and expect you to swim.”

“That’s just what adults do to kids,” says Venus, and Neptune doesn’t have an argument for that. She slides into the water beside Venus, letting it soak into her, letting herself soak into it, and she swirls around Venus, part whirlpool, part embrace, but better than any hug given with a solid body. 

“We’ll do better,” says Venus, and she means it like a promise and like a threat. She lets her fingers drag through the water, through Neptune, and she welcomes the cool water slipping through her fingers like wind. “So what brought on the eagles swimming?” 

Neptune swirls around Venus, drawing her closer to the center of the lake, away from the bank. It’s a little bit scary and a little bit exciting, to be suspended in the midst of the dark, cold water. She can see more dark things moving in the water.

Neptune surrounds her, and it's like a hug, without the smothering heat of their breath on your neck and their meat pressing into your own. The things that Venus catches glimpses of in the deepness of the water shift around the periphery of her vision, but they won't come near her when she's enveloped in Neptune like this, and she's always got a little bit of Neptune dripping off of her like so much sweat. 

She realizes, with a start, that she can dive down into the water and let her light shine bright, burn out the shadows like throwing open the door to a darkroom. 

Or maybe she'll see if they'll be her friends. There's something refreshing about monsters that look like monsters - it's the ones with the human faces you need to be careful of. 

Neptune pulls her under the water, and Venus can’t breathe, but then she remembers that she doesn’t _need_ to breathe in her new body, and she lets the water, tinged with Neptune, fill her up. 

"The pastor at my church had a very long, involved, bullshit sermon about things being in their proper place," Neptune says. Her voice vibrates through Venus's whole body, from inside her guts, resonating through her sinuses and sliding across her skin, over her feathers. Each word is a pinky swear. a stolen kiss. A promise for forever and a day. "As the birds in the sky, the beasts in the field, the fish in the sea, so to did women belong below man and blah blah _blah_." There was the sensation of Neptune rolling her eyes, even if Venus couldn't see them. "I compiled a list of things that contradicted it, since it pissed me off so much. Birds that swim, fish that walk, beasts that fly."

"Only you would study zoology out of spite," Venus says, her words little bubbles of light that float up to the surface, to pop when they hit the air. 

“Best reason to study it,” says Neptune, and she pulls Venus deeper under the water. When she presses more of herself against Venus’s lips, it’s as gentle as a kiss, and Venus lets herself be filled to the brim. 

* * *

The Summer Scouts’ kitchen is surprisingly cramped, and Venus has to sit on a counter top to stay out of the way, as Jupiter shuffles around. 

"My mom wasn't ever really that good at kitchen stuff," Jupiter tells Venus, as she pushes a piece of hair behind her ear. Her hands are fanned out around them, pulling things from shelves, out of the fridge. There's a metal bowl in the sink, and hot water is filing it up, running over the sides. It makes a sound a little bit like rain on a tin roof. 

The light over the door leading outside is a bright, buttery yellow, and it leaches out into the darkness, turning the shadows grey. Venus knows there's a picnic table just out of the range of the light, and the old sirens that nobody knows what to recommission into. There's a parable about a man and a kite that Venus remembers, faintly, but it's not coming to her right now. 

"I don't think she likes being a person," Jupiter says, and she says it as if she's imparting some great secret. "She doesn't like to eat or drink, she doesn't like any sorts of... body things." She makes an expansive gesture, and all of the kitchen utensils float in a dizzying display, like a weird animation project.

"And you do?" Venus rests her elbows on her thighs, her chin on the palm of her hand. 

"Oh, definitely," Jupiter says. "And... I think they like me." She doesn't elaborate, and Venus doesn't ask for more information. She thinks she can see the shape of whatever it is that Jupiter is getting at, although she's too comfortable to probe at that particular thought process. 

Venus lets her feet dangle, and one of her flip-flops falls down, leaving her bare foot pale in the yellow light. There's something calming, watching the way all of Jupiter's arms fan out. It's like a giant kaleidoscope, only it's all arms, and some of them are holding whisks, or something that looks like the blade of a mini-guillotine, topped by some kind of rubber handle. 

"What is that?"

"What's what?" Jupiter pauses, all of her arms momentarily still.

"That," Venus says, pointing to the guillotine blade.

"Oh. It's a bench scraper." Jupiter waggles it, and two of her hands are taking the metal bowl out of the sink, setting it on the counter next to Venus. Another hand is putting in a pinch of sugar, a teaspoon and a half of yeast, a cup of water. 

"What's it for?" Venus's eyes blink, slow and lazy in the light. Her wings are waving, slowly, making more of a breeze than the old fan rattling away in the corner. 

"Scraping the bench," says Jupiter. She moves to stand beside Venus, and her hip is leaning into Venus's knee, as she uses the whisk to carefully stir up the water in the bowl. 

"Why would you want to scrape the bench?" Venus frowns. She feels like she's missing something.

Jupiter snorts, and she kisses Venus on the mouth, a quick little peck like your first taste of mint or when you dip your toe in the lake before jumping in. It sends a pleasant jolt through Venus, and she smiles. There's a little bit of flour on Jupiter's cheek, and when they kiss, it smears on Venus's own cheek. "You call the space you're making bread on the bench," she tells Venus. 

"You really did your research, didn't you?" Venus looks down into the bowl as Jupiter goes to bustle around, no doubt finding other bread making ingredients. Venus likes to bake, but she's always stayed away from bread - yeast is finicky, and there's always been something incredibly _physical_ about making bread.

Venus is fairly new at having a body she wants to use in any capacity. She's still slowly realizing just how much of her _self_ was built around not inhabiting her old one. 

"If you're gonna do something, might as well do it well," Jupiter says, and then she makes a delighted noise, as a little puff of golden foam comes up in the bowl of water and sugar and yeast. "Look at that!" She's rocking on her heels, and she looks excited. "I read, in one old book, that yeast blooming like that means it loves you." 

"Oh wow," says Venus, and she doesn't know why that's such a revelation, but it _is_ , and it makes something in her chest ache. Her eyes are all getting misty, and she looks down at her lap and sniffs loudly, as her wings seem to grow dimmer and the kitchen gets darker. 

"What's wrong?" Jupiter asks, and she sounds nervous. There are hands on Venus's face now, hands on her shoulders, fingers wiping away tears. "I, uh, I didn't mean to -"

"I'm just..." Venus sniffs. "I think I used to be like your mom." She sighs, resting her forehead against Jupiter's shoulder, and Jupiter rubs her back, strokes her hair. 

"You used to wear pearls and drink highballs?" Jupiter's posture is going stiff. She's trying to be Strong again, trying to be the untouchable amazing tomboy athlete that everyone always looks up to. Venus can see fingers searching for wrists, trying to find a hair tie that isn't there anymore. 

(They tossed all of Jupiter's hair ties in the lake, that first morning. And okay, it's been a bit annoying because now Jupiter has to keep her hair back with bandannas and hats, and they're gonna have to get her more hair ties on the next supply run, but it's the principle of the thing.) 

"Not highballs," says Venus, and she sniffs again. She turns her face up, and is kissed again, with Jupiter's tongue in her mouth and Jupiter's hands on her face, her back, covering her eyes. She pulls back to rest her forehead against Jupiter's, and Jupiter rubs their noses together, her hair escaping the bandanna and curtaining the both of them.

"Are you... worried that I think of you like my mother?" Jupiter seems a bit lost at sea, but she's trying. Jupiter always tries, and it's one of the things that make her such a good kid, or maybe a bad kid with aspirations of goodness, but what even _is_ goodness anymore, now that they're all the devil?

"No," Venus says, and she laughs, a watery little sound. "I just..." She sniffs again. "It's complicated," she says, finally. "Having a body. Being a person."

"It is," Jupiter agrees, and there's an arm around Venus's shoulders. "But... we've got bread, made with yeast that loves us." 

"We do," Venus says, and she holds on tighter to Jupiter with the body that is _her_ body, physical and real and metaphysical and imagined all at the same time. Jupiter smells like sweat and flour and skin and the Devil, and Venus doesn't ever want to be anywhere else, ever again.


End file.
